


The Hamilton Pamphlet

by DullahansInSleepyHollow



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Abandonment, Alexander Hamilton Being an Asshole, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, BAMF Maria, Bisexual Alexander Hamilton, Child Abuse, Chronic Illness, Domestic Violence, F/M, History repeating, Human Disaster Alexander Hamilton, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, bastards, kidneys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-15 06:25:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14785221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DullahansInSleepyHollow/pseuds/DullahansInSleepyHollow
Summary: It's been thirteen years since Alexander Hamilton fucked up in his affair with Maria Lewis Reynolds.He's the happy father of eight children, husband to Eliza and working on having something special with John (and Eliza).Bringing his law practice back after serving as Treasury Secretary for several years, life is good.Until Lafayette sends him a poem that was sent in by some kid for a writing contest. A kid scorning the father he never knew, who used his mother to cheat on his wife. Treated her like little more than a dime-store whore.A smart-mouthed kid named A. Alexander Lewis, who is thirteen years old and writes like he's running out of time.Oh fuck.





	1. His Burn

**Author's Note:**

> First Burn had me shook. So here ya go. 
> 
>  
> 
> The italics are the modified lyrics to First Burn by our lovely Lin-Manuel Miranda. 
> 
>  
> 
> I know this chap sucks but it's just exposition. :p

_She saved every letter you wrote her_

_From the moment she saw me_  
_She knew I was **yours**_  
_But you were not mine_  
_I never thought you were mine..._

 _Do you know what she said_  
_When I asked her what you'd done?_  
_Six years old, I was so young._  
_She said..._

 _"Your father's an Icarus_  
_And I was the sun."_

 

He was born seven months after the affair ended.

  
His mother named him Africa, after the song by Toto that had been playing in his father's car the first time he'd said he loved her.

  
"I love this song." He'd laughed that night, loose black hair spreading across the cream colored upholstery like spilled ink on parchment. "Almost as much as I love you." Kissing away a freckle on her shoulder. He was hers in that moment. All hers.

_  
(No. He wasn't.)_

 

 _ **Don't** take another step in my direction,_  
_I can't be trusted around you._

 _ **Don't** think you can talk your way_  
_Into her arms, into my life..._  
 _Assuaging your guilt, don't make me laugh_.

_You don't deserve the right._

_I'm burning the letters you wrote her_  
_You can stand over there if you want_  
_I don't know who you are_  
_I have so much to learn_  
_I'm reading the letters_

_And watching them **Burn...**_

 

He was three years old the first time his half-sister called him a _bastard._

  
He was six when he realized what it meant.

  
That those things his step-father had been calling him all his life: _little snake, by-blow, mistake, whore's son, pretty boy, piglet, the bastard's bastard etc;_ as he beat him into the floorboards, had all been for the same reason. The infamous Hamilton-Reynolds Scandal had been about his mother and her tryst with his biological father. He was born from sin.

  
That was why the members of his family's tiny church and clutch-town in Backwards, Montana, gossiped about him, called him a child _'fallen from God_ ' and treated him like veritable sin-incarnate. She wouldn't name a father in the public eye and they scorned her for it. It was obvious that he wasn't Reynolds' child, the man even confessed to it on numerous occasions in front of everybody. To shame her and the little boy who looked nothing like him.

  
His mother was black and light-skinned, Reynolds was black and dark-skinned, his sister had come out a perfectly lovely mix of both. He came out looking white, with his big blue-violet eyes and barely tan skin. In later years, when he bleached his hair Barbie-blonde, it only made things worse.

  
It was obvious he wasn't a Reynolds. His mother gave him the surname Lewis, her maiden name.

 

His sweet mother, who had always loved him more than anything in the world, even enough to leave her abusive husband when he was seven to flee back to New York City, along with the daughter Reynolds had viciously turned against her. Susan wouldn't leave and his mother was forced into a _Sophie's Choice_ as they drove away. Choosing one child over the other. Africa knew that she never forgave herself for that.

  
"Mama," he had asked that night, with an enormous bruise mottled all colors of the rainbow decorating the left side of his face from where he'd head-butted a door jamb. "Where are we going?"

  
"Far away, baby. Far far away." She cleared her throat before: " _It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you... There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do. I bless the rains down in Africa, gonna take some time to do the things we never had..."_

  
She sang softly, his name song, and he fell asleep with a little fist in his mouth, trusting his mother with everything he had.

 

 _You published the letters she wrote to you_  
_You told the whole world_  
_How you brought a girl into your bed_  
_In clearing your name, you have ruined **our lives**_

 _Heaven forbid someone whisper:_  
_**"He's part of some scheme."** _  
_Your enemy whispers,_  
_So we have to scream!_  
_I know about whispers..._  
_Don't you see how they scorn me? **Even my sister!**_

 

  
They'd only been free for a year before everything went to shit.

 

Right after his ninth birthday he started getting the stomachaches. It felt like fullness and burning inside of him and his sides and he didn't understand it. The little boy who loved running and ice-skating and just being active, suddenly couldn't anymore. At first, they just wrote it off as some kind of lingering damage that Reynolds had caused to his nerves or muscles in there. But then one day, he walked to the bathroom, all achy and sore, to pee and what came out was straight blood. He was terrified.

 

Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease.

 

A genetic disease that meant his kidneys were swollen, shitty and covered with fluid-filled cysts ( _bubbles)_. He'd been born with the disease, but it didn't start appearing till nine. When his kidney function went down like the Hindenburg. Probably due to all the trauma brought on by Reynolds' fists. In any normal person, symptoms wouldn't have started until the 30-60 age window. That's the age they had started for his grandmother, his father's mother. If you're going to pass on a genetic disease, it's customary to start with hello.

 

There was no treatment either. Just a sad game of trying desperately to keep up with every symptom that appeared. But in the end, it was no use.

 

His kidneys failed when he was eleven and he was on dialysis for six months.

 

The process of dialysis was fairly simple. He just kind of laid there in a knockoff lazyboy, chairs stolen from the chemo-ward, three times a week. Hooked up to this huge machine as it filtered his blood through it and poured it back in. It's real name was hemodialysis and it was boring as all fuck. He felt like crap the day after but after that he was good. Until the next appointment.

 

It was during one of those appointments that he picked up a pen and wrote a deliverance.

 

He had always been a talented writer and a loud-mouthed little brat. Something that had brought him little more than a steel-toed boot in the spleen as a small child. But this time, he used it to his advantage. From his shitty hospital recliner he wrote pieces in support for a new bill being passed, one that would outlaw both physical and economic forms of domestic abuse. And that was just the start. His mother watched as he wrote nonstop, fingers stained black from cheap pens or sore from the keys of his laptop.

 

He wrote scathing pieces about the lack of funding for chronic illnesses and the fickle nature of insurance companies and their coverage. He wrote for WorldVision, the organization determined to spread clean water instead of disease across the African plains. He wrote bulletins and long-ass tweets about the importance of donating blood and all the things The Red Cross did for those in need.

 

His mother would tug his writing utensils out of his hands once he fell asleep, kissing him softly on the temple.

 

After six months his mother was able to donate her kidney to him.

 

Giving him a super cool twelve inch scar across his stomach and a new shot at life.

 

 **_  
__Don't!_**  
_I'm not naive,_  
_I have seen women around you!_

  
**_Don't!_ **  
_Think I don't see,_  
_How they fall for your charms,_  
_All of **my charms!**_

 _I'm putting myself in your narrative,_  
_Let future historians wonder how you reacted_  
_When you found out what you missed,_  
_You have thrown it all away_  
_My life, my story, my love..._  
_Stand back, watch it burn!_  
_Just watch it all **Burn...**_

 

  
At thirteen years old, Africa Alexander Lewis founded and ran his own nonprofit organization _: LoveYourGuts._

  
Which educated kids about organ donation, transplantation and diseases relating to and around them. They also manufactured stuffed toy organs, both healthy and sick, allowing younger children to hug, touch and understand what was inside them and inside others. They also worked with adults and teens, trying to assuage nerves about transplants and donation, as well as support for those who were waiting for an organ(s), have donated organ(s), will donate organ(s), or are post-transplant.

  
He of course, kept in close contact with his many other charities, donating his time wherever he could and just kept on writing for whoever and whatever would publish them. And sometimes just for himself.

 

He turned into a happy teen who wore _LoveYourGuts_ crop-tops to show off his kidney disease scars and happily spoke with kids to explain what kidneys were and what they did, as well as what was wrong with his. Using his loud-mouth for others' deliverance instead of his own. Using the talents and charms he'd inherited from his father and that he'd hated for so long for good instead.

  
Maria Lewis Reynolds gently kissed her little boy on the forehead after he fell asleep at his desk again, gently taking the fat pink ponytail holder out of his platinum hair and tucking a blanket around his shoulders. Closing that laptop and setting aside his current battered purple composition notebook.

_  
"How do you write like you’re running out of time? Write day and night like you’re running out of time?"_

  
She asked softly, already knowing the answer.

  
Africa was her son.

  
But no matter how much she tried to deny it, he was still Alexander's as well. And more and more like him everyday.

 

  
_And when the time comes..._  
_Explain to your **real children**_  
_The pain and embarrassment_  
_You put their mother through,_  
_You put my mother through,_  
_You put their brother through,_

 _When will you learn?_  
_That they are your legacy!_  
_**We** are your legacy!_  
_I never thought you were mine._  
_If you thought you were mine..._

**_Don't._ **

 

 

He finished the last word of his poem and ripped every page out of his notebook. Stapling them together and shoving them into a manila folder. It was his submission for the _Young Rising Poets of NYC_ writing contest, it was his first time submitting, but why the hell not?

  
Rage writing, yay.

  
He popped on a couple of stamps and slid it into their mail cubby downstairs.

  
"Hey baby, what's up?"

  
His Mom asked as he raced back up the stairs and bear-crawled over to find his other red converse shoe. "Nothing much Mommy-O, just putting a poem in the mail." He threw himself down and pulled on his other shoe like a damaged turtle on his back. She popped her head out of the kitchen and smiled, sticking out her tongue and winking.

  
"What's it called?"

  
_"First Burn_ to start with."

 

 


	2. Her Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A family full of crazy hotheads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote below is from Body Love by Mary Lambert.

 

  
He was in the middle of a run when he got the notification.

  
Suffice to say, he hit _The Wall_ pretty early on in that run. Hitting _The Wall_ usually happened for him during the twentieth mile of a marathon, when all his energy left him and he cursed his love of running, this one happened four blocks away from he and his mother's painted sunshine-yellow studio apartment. His breath was basically knocked out of his lungs, as he looked at the email.

  
_A. Lewis, you have one (1) new email notifications and zero (0) old unread emails! Click here to see them._

  
He clicked. Of course he clicked.

  
_From: marquisdelafayette@whmail.com_  
_To: kilimanjaroabovetheserengeti@gmail.com_  
_cc: a.hamilton@whmail.com_

_Subject: Submission for Young Rising Poets of NYC_

_Hello, Africa!_

_My name is Gilbert Lafayette and I just had the pleasure of reading your submission for YRP-NYC._

_It was one of the very best that I have ever had the pleasure of doing so! My former-coworker and close friend Hercules Mulligan is one of the judges this year and he insisted, which I'm very glad he did!_

_Your name sounded familiar however, so I researched a little bit more and found out that not only are you a talented young writer, but you created and currently run your own nonprofit foundation and are involved with several other charities that Former-President Washington, an old employer and an even older friend, is very invested in. As you probably know, his new resolution since leaving office is to better the lives of youth and minorities in this country. Whether you place high in YRP-NYC or not, we have many other opportunities for you to explore in the future._

_Have you thought about college or maybe partnering your foundation with another? We could talk about the logistics over coffee sometime._

_Please feel free to contact me at your convenience,_

_  
G. Lafayette_

  
Africa felt hate bloom up in his chest.

  
He felt sick and he felt hurt and he felt sad, and then all the emotions bled through his fingers at once. He felt the hurricane inside of him take over and didn't bother censoring it. He knew the truth. The real reason he had been contacted. Everyone knew who Maria Lewis Reynolds was, anyone could check his age and birthdate on Wikipedia, and looking at a picture made it fairly obvious. He knew that Gilbert Lafayette was a close friend of Alexander.

  
It didn't exactly take a genius.

  
_From: kilimanjaroabovetheserengeti@gmail.com_  
_To: marquisdelafayette@whmail.com_  
_cc: a.hamilton@whmail.com_

_Subject: Re: Submission for Young Rising Poets of NYC_

_Hello, Mr. Lafayette!_

_I really appreciate the effort you put into your thinly-veiled excuse to contact me! We both know the real reason, darling. So let's not beat around the bush. :)_

_I don't know if you actually read my poem, which I hope you did because all my writing is fantastic, but in contacting me about it, you have willingly put yourself into the line of fire and I am not pulling my punches._

_I frankly don't give a shit about Alexander Hamilton's secondary agenda, it's true and I'm not ashamed to be The Reynolds Pamphlet dumpster-baby, okay? No, I'm not going to the media with my story, which I'm sure was his first concern when you notified him of this. Though I highly doubt his personal reputation could really dip down any further. I have my own interests to think about, and I don't need him besmirching what I am trying to do here._

_You seem like a fairly decent man who understands the importance of people other than himself, but your bosom-buddy notably lacks that quality. I am trying to make the world a better place and the last thing I need is a tumor named Alexander poisoning my pursuits. Feel free to tell him so at your leisure._

_Long story short: I don't want money, I don't want power, I don't want to blackmail him like James Reynolds. Oh no. I want to win a gift card in this goddamn writing contest to give to my mother for Valentine's Day. He can continue ignoring my existence like he has the last thirteen years. In fact, I would prefer it._

_Mr. Lafayette, some advice, when you find people you love: cherish them. Surround yourself with sunshine and love and laughter, because life is short. The last thing I want is some sad old man trying to rain on my parade. Because, if provoked, I will ruin him. You will see my writing on every website and posting on every billboard in New York City, whatever little headway he had made in repairing his reputation, I will destroy._

_Because I love my mother._

_She's made mistakes, hell she still makes them. But she's my Mom. Alexander is little more than a blip._

_Allow me to end this with a small quote from my latest slam poetry hit: Love._

_"You are worth more than who you fuck!_  
_You are worth more than a waistline!_  
_You are worth more than beer bottles displayed like drunken artifacts._  
_You are worth more than any naked body could proclaim in the shadows,_  
_More than a man's whim or your father's mistake."_

_Sums up a lot now doesn't it? Can't you just picture me on a stage with a crown and a lovely sash?_

_Miss **Take**_

_Tata for now, Mr. Lafayette!_

  
_A. Alexander Lewis  
(Whore's son)_

  
He sent it without a second thought to the matter. Rage still burning hot and high in his cheeks.

  
He then shoved his phone in his pocket and continued on with his run. He could feel the raised bumpy scar from his Hickman catheter in his chest, when he tucked it in there, the tubes that used to hang out of him and connect to his dialysis machine every other day. When it wasn't the Hickman, it was disgusting fistulas in both arms that healed horribly.

  
Back when he'd sported them, he hadn't even been able to look underneath his long sleeves half of the time. The way they sucked in and out, beating like sick miniature hearts squirming beneath his skin. It was enough to make him want to puke. The scars they left behind weren't any better.

  
His first marathon was for the National Kidney Foundation.

  
He ran twenty-six-point-two miles, eight months post-transplant. Something he really shouldn't have done, but did anyway, and that almost put him back in the hospital. His Mom had to carry him off the track, gold medal around his neck and half-comatose. But he hadn't done it for himself. He was hella sick for a good three years because of ADPKD, long years full of tortuous treatments and surgeries that tore him apart and built him back up again. But it was so fucking easy compared to the other patients he was surrounded by.

  
He ran for the babies who had been born without kidney function and only knew life on the dialysis machine.

  
For those who waited years instead of months for a transplant.

  
For those who lost their battles far too early.

  
In the same way he founded _LoveYourGuts_ , not for him, but for the kids he saw with zipper scars on their chests or geometric shapes cut into chemo-bald heads. He started running because he saw a deficit, he saw a way to help better the lives of others. So he ran.

  
He ran because he _could_.

  
Just because what Alexander did fucked up his world, didn't mean it had to be the end of everything. He would make things better. Ambition didn't have to mean a drive for just personal gain. Ambition was the thing that ruined Alexander, but ambition was the thing Africa could use to save others. He would never become that skeevy asshole.

  
Africa had to be honest though. In the deepest, brightest parts of his sutured heart. The dude had put a black mark on his mother's reputation for the rest of her life, she would never shake the scandal. And he would always be the scandal's living proof, whether the media knew it or not. But, at least Alexander had never physically hurt her. He wasn't Reynolds. He had never laid an unkind hand on Africa's mother. Which may have not sounded like a lot, but definitely carved a deep swath between them in his mind. Alexander was a massive dick and had made several awful mistakes in his life, most that he had yet to correct. But he wasn't completely reprehensible. He wasn't Reynolds. He wasn't evil. Africa had seen both and knew the difference.

  
He slowed to a trot, taking a swig out of his water-bottle as he neared the apartment. Then dragged out his phone to check the time...

  
_A. Lewis, you have one (3) new email notifications and zero (0) old unread emails! Click here to see them._

  
_(2) from_ marquisdelafayette@whmail.com  
_(1) from a.hamilton@whmail.com_

  
Wait _. What?_

  
He flipped back to his last email and there it was in black and white, pixelated text.

  
_cc: a.hamilton@whmail.com_

  
No. Oh god no. No. No. No. No. No. No!

  
He had emailed Alexander.

  
He had written an insulting long-ass email that was cc-ed to Alexander. Jesus Christ. Oh he was dead. Oh he was so dead. He had admitted to his sordid conception story and everything. If Alexander didn't already know about him or the viability of his _Maury: You ARE the father!_ fears, well... He did now. Shit. What was he going to tell his Mom? Was he going to read them?

  
No. No fucking way!

  
He clicked on the one he really shouldn't have clicked on. Because for all his other attributes, Africa had no fucking self-control.

  
_From: a.hamilton@whmail.com_  
_To: kilimanjaroabovetheserengeti@gmail.com_

_Subject: Meeting_

_Africa,_

_Please meet with me whenever. We should talk in person._

_414 W 141st St, New York, NY 10031_

_A. Ham_

  
He was not going.

  
He was in a taxi within the hour.

  
_Goddammit!_

  
The ride was _tedious_ to say the least. He didn't announce his coming, as part of him was still hoping nobody would answer the door. So he just sat there in the cab, sweaty platinum hair everywhere, his ponytail looking like a cat's bottlebrush, his gold shorts sticking uncomfortably to his legs, which were more like raw hams by this point, after his long run. His huge _Boycott Shamu Shows_ hoodie was stifling but he didn't have a shirt on underneath and simply forgot to change in his conflicted dash. He looked a downright mess. ( _Wow, maybe he did look like one of Hamilton's creations after all)._

  
There were so many things he wanted to do.

  
He wanted to run in there screaming and punch his Alexander in the fucking face. He wanted to throw all his success in the man-whore's face, _look at all of what I accomplished without you!_ He wanted to cast off his hoodie and show off all the surgical scars and the scars from Reynolds' abuse. _Look at what you caused! Look how you let him hurt me!_ And part of him, a squashed down little part stuck with a million needles like a pincushion, wanted to hug the ever-living daylights out of his father and ask if he was proud.

  
The Hamilton Grange was cream-colored and littered with painted white banisters, a few even had kids' hands prints pressed into the bases. It was pretty, picturesque. Something to adorn a glossy postcard, filled with a perfectly flawless family to wave and smile.

  
He didn't match.

  
And it wasn't just the sweaty jogging clothes either.

  
There he was, left standing like an idiot in front of the steps.

  
Him, _Africa Alexander Lewis,_ who could stand in front of a crowd of thousands and talk about the scariest points of his life, lying on a hospital gurney before being wheeled into surgery for the millionth time or the mechanisms of his transplant. He could talk about abuse, his or his mother's. He could scream at the top of his lungs in anger or during poetry slams. He could run in front of hundreds upon thousands of people, with them as well, during his marathons. He used to skate in front of hundreds when he competed. He could be loud singing in church, or quietly singing a lullaby to one of the tiny babies in his Peds ward.

  
But he couldn't even walk up a couple of steps and talk to the man who'd created him all those years ago. Christ.

  
He forced himself. He bit down on his bottom lip viciously and forced himself up those steps, even as his hands grew sweatier than the rest of him and his knees knocked together.

  
It felt like giving up. It felt like giving in. It felt like betraying his mother.

  
He felt tears burning in the corners of his eyes as he knocked on the mahogany door and he ducked his head as his cheeks blazed. _What are you doing here?_

_  
Oh God. Just run. Just run away from here as fast as you can!_

  
Oh yeah, he was so running.

  
But the moment he turned to go...

  
"Do you like polar bears?"

  
_What?_

  
He turned back and there was a little girl standing in the open doorframe. She looked scary pale, like ghostly white and sick-pasty, her blue eyes were red-rimmed and watery and she was swaying back and forth slightly like it was out of her control. Her dark curls were cut short and hung loose and unwashed, with a few pieces sweat-stuck to her forehead.

  
Now Africa was a little bitch and a smart-mouthed brat for a majority of the time, it was his thing, but kids were a different ballgame completely. He loved kids.

  
"Not as much as I like grizzlies. Have you ever seen a grizzly bear?" He sunk down to her level automatically. She shook her head, wide-eyed.

  
"Imagine a big fat fluffy polar bear, but brown." He puffed out his cheeks and stuck out his front-teeth, letting more platinum hair fall in his face and turning his hands into claws. She giggled, clapping her pudgy hands together. _Did nobody teach this little girl not to talk to strangers? And where the hell was her minder?_

  
"What's your name? I'm Lizziebeth!" She stuck part of her hand in her mouth to suck on and he absentmindedly tugged it back out with a finger hooked around her wrist.

  
"Africa, like the place."

  
Recognition dawned in her eyes and she started singing. _"Jambo, Africa! Jambo means hello, hello! Jambo, Africa!_ " Madeline. He should've known. The smile on his face grew even wider. He took her little spittle-soaked hand and followed her inside. Once again, mildly concerned that this sick preschooler was just letting strangers into her house, without any adult supervision.

  
The house was, well... _big_ to say the least. Just _damn_. It was the sort of house you could have eight kids in and never see them. Which, he supposed, Alexander did. The nearby couch in the parlor with the TV on was covered in toys and mussy pink and purple blankets, Lizziebeth's little fortress it seemed. She also staggered right towards it, as Africa wiped his hand off on his pants. Judging by the red-speckled rash he spotted as her pajama shirt rode up her back and the distinctive strawberry tongue he saw in her mouth... _Scarlet Fever. Fantastic._

  
_Well. He was gonna die._

  
_Far out._

  
"Elizabeth _Hamilton!"_

  
A man came charging out of the _kitchen?_ with reddish brown curls piled up on top of his head and more freckles than the night-sky had stars. He was pointedly young, maybe early twenties, and looked happy. That was the only thing that stood out about him on first sight. He was happy. He had a gold band on his finger, a little scar on the corner of his mouth and when he smiled, one side was higher than the other. Africa knew who he was, from the moment he laid eyes on him, _Philip Hamilton_.

  
The oldest of the Hamilton brood, the one who was just a little younger than he was now, when the Pamphlet was published. Old enough to read and get shit for it.

  
The guy graduated summa cum laude from Columbia, it was in a back section of the paper once, Africa still kept the clipping in a box underneath his bed with a couple of better tabloids about Alexander. Which probably sounded impossibly creepy, but honestly wasn't meant like that. He had no idea when Philip got married. He would've sent a card or something, in a totally non-creepy way.

  
Lizziebeth threw herself on the couch, giggling, the moment Philip called her name with all the emphasis on the last.

  
"Did you leave your couch, young lad--" His voice cut off the moment he saw Africa, looking just like the awkward mess he was. _Say something, motormouth._ "Hello? I'm sorry, did she let you in? ...Could I... help you with something?"

  
There were shoes strewn everywhere, mostly shoved under couches by stray kicks, pictures hanging on every wall, kiddie and adult umbrellas collecting in a bucket by the door and a soccer bag haphazardly tossed down beside the stairs, half of its contents tumbling out and onto the floor. It looked lived in, along with the big. _Well, what did you expect? A dungeon?_

  
"I was hoping to see your father? Is he here?"

  
_I'm your brother._

  
The words were right there on his tongue. But when he looked into Philip's open smiling face, the face of a man whose family turmoil had finally abated, who appeared to be just another happy newly-wed. Whose childhood had likely been stolen by scandal, the same as his own. Africa just couldn't do it. He wasn't conscious to make the decision about ruining Philip's life the first time around, but this one would've been a choice. It would've been nefarious and on-purpose. He would've become Alexander, and he wasn't ready to take that plunge. Not now. Not ever.

  
"Let me check." Still smiling in that easy way of his. He walked over to the staircase and shouted up as loud as he could. "Hey Jamie!" A loud grunt echoed back down. "Is Pops in his office?!" There was a clambering of footfalls and a shut door.

  
"Jamie's busy! I'll check though!" Another voice.

  
Philip's smile got bigger, fonder, more familiar. "Thanks, Church!"

  
A pointed silence before... "Yeah, he's in there! Dad's outside with Mom and Will... gardening, I think? Did you need them too?"

  
Philip shook his head, even though it should've been obvious that Church couldn't see it. "Nah just Pops! He's got a visitor! Did he order a kid named..." Those eyes turned back to him.

  
"Ricky Lewis, I wrote a poem and he emailed me about it. Said he wanted to talk in person?"

  
"Sounds like him." Philip set his hands back on the banister and yelled up again. "Ricky Lewis, he wrote a poem or something!"

  
When there was no answer, the older youth just shrugged and motioned for Africa to ascend. He relished in the escape until, "Oh yeah! I'm Philip Hamilton by the way, but everyone just calls me Pip. This is my wife Theo," A girl with Bantu braids popped her head around the corner and waved. She had a streak of flour across the bridge of her nose and lavender lipstick that made her mouth pop, it suited her nicely. Even though he really didn't need to meet _every person in this godforsaken house._ He just wanted to get his shit done with Alexander and leave.

  
"It's nice to meet you." He forced out and basically ran up the rest of the steps.

  
And just about tackled another boy, who was maybe a handful of years older than him, with long wavy black hair that could use a good washing, underneath his knitted black beanie, a lip ring, beetlejuice earrings, and a scowl. Those blue-violet eyes, the same shade as his own, rolled around in his head, showing off the whites of his eyes like a dying horse begging to be put down.

  
"He's in there." A black nail-polished thumb jutted out towards a red door down the carpeted hallway, as the older teen marched off, MCR blaring from the fat black skull headphones resting around his neck.

  
He had no idea why he said _Ricky_. His Mom didn't even call him Ricky. That was a hospital name, it was what the other kids used to call himself in therapy. " _Therapy_ " being the codename for when all the kids over ten, met in the only decent hospital playroom without those bead-wire toys designed to teach futility, and tried to hang out like normal teens and tweens. It usually ended with someone catching the wrong end of a maraca in the asshole and another getting acrylically-painted nipples.

  
The door was already ajar.

  
And he pushed it open like it weighed a hundred pounds.

  
Alexander Hamilton was sitting at his desk, his black hair tied up and out of the way. Laugh lines around his eyes and a pen cap in his mouth, as he typed away on his laptop with one hand and scrawled on his yellow notepad with the other. He had smudges of dark, sleepless nights underneath the same blue-violet eyes. It was easy to see echoes of his own face in Alexander's, they were near the spitting image of one another. The beginnings of age had altered Alexander's complexion, but Africa had altered his own himself. Bleaching his hair and using copious amounts of makeup when he could.

  
"Welcome to the cave, my young visi--"

  
Alexander's voice died the moment he caught sight of Africa.

  
They were left just staring at each other.

  
He itched at his shorts, they were still sweat-stuck to his thighs from nerves and the stupid run. _I hate you. I hate you so goddamn much for what you did to my Mom. To me! Did you know? Did you even care? Did you bother to check on her? You know, after you left her with the abusive husband who forced her into fucking you? Exploiting her and you? Did you just pretend she never existed because you were done with her?_ He wanted to scream it all at the top of his lungs with fury.

  
But then he saw the pictures on Alexander's desk.

  
A couple of baby pictures, some unflattering school head-shots, various birthdays and Christmases, pictures with mall Santa and The Easter Bunny, a couple professional shots from when Eliza was visibly pregnant, and a few older ones that were obviously from Alexander's college days, with a youth who looked like Philip with lighter, curlier hair and two other men. The taller with a tied back poof of 4c natural curls and milk-chocolate skin, the other: broader with a cut short afro and a beanie. The story of a life, told in snapshots and stolen moments. _It must have hurt them so much._

  
Seeing the pictures, the proof of Alexander's humanity, it was like when his mother used to string Christmas lights around the guards on his hospital bed, to make sure she could see him, even in the dark.

  
 _I hate you_. Is what he was going to say. What came out was, "I wish I could hate you. I tried so hard to hate you."

  
"Africa?" Alexander sounded incredulous. Blinking repeatedly, over and over like he could scarcely believe his eyes. He closed his laptop and set aside the papers.

  
"You're blonde?"

  
The teen snorted in disbelief. Of all the questions...

  
"Bleached." Forcing down the smile that threatened.

  
"Ah." Alexander even did that thing where he let his bangs tumble into his face when he was nervous. Africa had thought he'd had the trademark on that.

  
They stared at each other awkwardly for a little longer before:

  
"I'm sorry." "I'm _so_ sorry."

  
At the same time.

  
"Wait... Why are you sorry, son? You haven't done anything wrong. I'm the one at fault here..." He looked exhausted. Africa tried not to care. He bristled instead.

  
" _Don't call me that!_ I'm _not_ your son, not in any way that matters. I'm your _byblow_ , I'm your _mistake_ , I'm your _damnation_... but I'm not your son. And I'm sorry about the email. I didn't know you were cc-ed or trust me, I would've written it better. I've been waiting for a chance to ream your ass for most of my conscious life." His clenched fists were trembling and he was biting his bottom lip so hard that he expected blood at any moment.

  
"Well? I'm _waiting_. Do your worst." When Africa didn't say anything, Alexander continued. "I found out about you earlier this week and just couldn't find the courage to email, so Laf did it instead. I knew you were mine from the dates and pictures. You just had to be, I mean, _look at you._ You look the most like me, out of every Hamilton progeny in this house." A strangely off-pitched laugh ensued.

  
"Don't I know it..." Africa just bit down harder, regretting having done anything at all.

  
"So... was Africa because of the continent or...?"

  
"The song." _The night you said you loved her. That one night she thought you were hers._

  
"I see..." Alexander pushed his hair out of his face, so that he could continue staring at Africa like he was the moon orbiting around the sun or some other sappy shit like that. It made him so uncomfortable. He didn't want to be looked at like some prized piece of meat, some token of victory. He was a _person._

  
"Why are you looking at me like that?!"

  
He grabbed onto the dark chestnut wood desk to steady himself, to steel himself as he shouted, eyes so like Alexander's, sporting a twisted mockery of his father's youthful face. A broken mirror, staring right back at him.

  
Alexander looked affronted, like he was offended about his staring being called out for how creepy and weird it was. Not unlike the way Africa collected the tabloids and clipped articles out of the paper and squirreled them away underneath his bed. A right mess, the two of them.

  
"I'm taking in the view." _Memorizing every small idiosyncratic detail of your face, admiring the sheer perfection I helped create. The wonders of fatherhood._ "It's something I've done with each of my other children, after they were handed to me in a fuzzy hospital blanket, on the day they were born. I guess, well, I'd forgotten how strange it must look. Newborns don't usually have social skills. Or can call me out on my shit as loudly." Sheepishly rubbing at the back of his neck.

  
"Why do you have to say stuff like that?!" His voice cracked like a snapped twig and tears burned in his eyes. His nails dug into the palms of his hands, viciously.

  
"Why can't you say you want me to leave, you know, in case _your real family_ sees me?! Why did you want me to come here anyway?! Aren't you ashamed of me?!" He stomped his foot like the child he'd never been. " _You're supposed to be ashamed of me!_ "

  
Alexander just sat there, vacant.

  
Where was the hot-blooded man who had filibustered for sixteen hours straight? The Treasury Secretary who was known for his acidic temper and ability to makes words his personal bitch? Where was the man who had given Africa the ability to trash-talk like there was no tomorrow?

  
"You're a _deadbeat_ , you know that right? But I guess some things are just unescapable. You created yourself, you jackass! A new little bastard son of a whore and a Scotsman, a new smart-mouthed little shit with a mother that everyone looks down on!" The hurricane was growing inside his chest and the words were escaping from his mouth before he could stop them. "You must have thought that you were so high and mighty. _No_. You're _James Hamilton_ , all over again."

  
Apparently bringing up deeper transgressions was the only way to get Alexander to wake up. The older man all but lunged to his feet.

  
"Your mother _never told me about you!_ She and that husband of hers _extorted_ me! I would have done something if I'd known, but I didn't! Lord knows I would've done my best to get you away from that awful bitch!"

  
Africa saw red.

  
"Don't you _ever_ talk about my mother like that! She made mistakes, hell, she still makes them! But she's a better parent than you will _ever_ be!" He watched the vein in Alexander's temple twitch. "Sure, she never told you, but did you _check?_ Did you check on the woman you abandoned with her abusive husband? You're the one who took advantage of _her!_ You were her way out! Her only solace and you abandoned _her!_ You abandoned _me!"_ Tears were coming unheeded. "Then you went and told the world about it! What little self-respect and reputation she had _and you destroyed it!_ "

  
"I had no choice! They accused me of embezzling! It would have cost me my career! My legacy!" He looked desperate, but Africa was stony and resolute in his own brokenness.

  
"Everything in the world is not about you!" He wailed, hands fisted in his hair. "Until you learn that," His eyes turned cold and icy. "I want nothing to do with you."

  
He ran out of that room and down the stairs as fast as he could, pushing past another boy clad in a shiny red soccer jersey and board shorts. " _Hey!"_ The other boy gasped but Africa just kept running. It was one of the only things he could actually do well.

  
Yet, Alexander was right on his tail. Jesus Fucking Christ, couldn't he just _go away?_

  
"Africa! Come back! Please, we can talk about this!"

  
His voice was edging on the precipice of begging. There was just something about that _voice_. It was hurt and desperate and it made Africa's heart ache inside of his chest. He wasn't made of stone, no matter how much he wanted to be, and he was still crying like some stupid kid. He tripped on the last step and spun around instead of falling. Glaring up at Alexander from where he stood on top of the lower staircase.

  
"I'm done talking to you, _asshole!"_

  
"Hey! You can't talk to my father like that!" Philip was standing there, arms crossed, preventing Africa's escape. "Who in _the hell_ do you think you are?"

  
_Your brother._

  
"Wouldn't you like to know? Why don't you just ask your man-whore of a father?" Crying turned his cheeks ruddy and his fists were raised, squaring up his shoulders as he glared straight at the oldest Hamilton boy. "Or maybe I should ask your wife, as the apple can't have fallen all that far from the tree!" He stepped closer, teeth gritted tight and jaw jutted outwards, challenging.

  
"Get out of my face, _kid_." A definite warning. Philip's eyes were narrowed and his own fists were clenched to mirror Africa's, shaking. _Ooo, a hothead too._ Africa knew exactly how to push those buttons.

  
He stepped forwards.

  
"Make me." _Oh shit._

  
A door opened behind him, and for an instant, he was distracted by the sound. So he wasn't wholly prepared for the punch.

  
He wasn't in the correct position to take a clock to the face anyway, his chin wasn't pressed down and the best he could manage was to just clamp his mouth shut and roll through it.

 

Granted, it was also a really shitty punch. More like a slap that just happened to be closed as opposed to a blow intended to harm. He knew the difference, and had known the difference since he was a little boy. The only pain came when one of his bottom teeth accidentally nicked the inside of his bottom lip. But given the reactions of everyone in the room, Alexander and the two boys behind him on the stairs, Theodosia, little Lizziebeth and the three new visitors, it was as if he'd been stabbed with a butcher knife.

  
_"Philip!_ " Alexander was aghast, rushing down the rest of the steps.

  
"What the hell is going on here!?"

  
It was the boy from Alexander's desk, the one who looked like Philip from his college days. Only now he looked a tad older, softer around the middle and with even more freckles than before. He was holding a long-legged boy, maybe around seven or eight, with messy brown hair and light brown eyes, and the same connect-the-dot freckles. A woman was with them, Eliza Hamilton, he knew her by her face, she was round and heavily pregnant with kid number... _eight_ was it?

  
But the moment Africa looked at them both dead-on, pushing his messy bleached hair out of his face, feeling the blood that dripped down his chin and streaked across his teeth.

  
The man's eyes widened and his jaw dropped.

  
"Oh my god. He's _you."_

  
Eliza sucked in a breath so sharp that it made a whistling noise. She saw the same thing he did.

  
"Alexander... What did you _do?"_

  
Alexander Hamilton looked stricken, just shaking his head in devastation, but Africa couldn't tear his eyes away from Eliza. _I ruined your life. I'm the proof of how he ruined your life. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry._

  
"I'm sorry." He looked at the ground, tears mixing with the blood, as both of them dripped onto the creamy carpet below. He sounded retched and everybody knew it. He just wished the ground would rise up and swallow him whole.

  
"Kid, I'm the one who's sorry. I shouldn't have..." Philip reached out for him, open-palmed, guilty. Instead, Africa backed away, smiling of all things. Smiling through his tears and not much else.

  
"You didn't hurt me, Philip. Trust me. Was that you _actually trying to punch me?_ Because if so... man, that was just _awful_. YouTube videos can help with the mechanisms if that's the problem, because _damn_. That _sucked_." Once a smart-mouthed brat, always a smart-mouthed brat. He scrubbed at his cheeks. "And I wasn't apologizing to _you._ " The blood tasted disgusting and it was all over his mouth, making his lips stick together like ticky-tape. "I was apologizing to _her._ " He motioned towards Eliza.

  
_"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Hamilton."_

  
Then he was running away, throwing open the front door and hurtling down the front steps. Easily disappearing as Alexander stared right after him. Seeing James Hamilton pulling away in his fishing trawler, never to return, where Africa ran away into the unknown. _Never to return._

  
"Alex... who was that boy?"

  
"I fucked up, Jack. I fucked up so badly. He's Maria's son. _My_ son. I damned my own child! I'm him. I've become _him..._

 

 _My own father_."

  
-X-

  
_“It is unfortunate that in most cases when the sins of the father fall on the son it is because unlike God, people refuse to forgive and forget and heap past wrongs upon innocent generations.”_

―E.A. Bucchianeri

  
-X-


End file.
